This is Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast More what You Hear Weekday
Afternoon's on the Drive. Frank fick Lucy was an Assistant director for counter Intelligence
at the FBI, where he served twenty five years as a special agent and
directed all espionage investigations across the government. He's also written the national bestseller The
FBI Way Inside the Bureau's Code of Excellence. His newest creation is long Haul
Hunting the Highway Serial Killers and Frank Figliuzy, good to have you along here
today. Oh, it's my pleasure. And boy does Oklahoma play an essential
part in this book. I imagine we do as we kind of are the
crossroads of the entire nation when it comes to long haul truck or traffic.
Yeah, it's true, but many cities are intersections of several interstate highways.
But you guys are special because the whole FBI Highway Serial Killings initiative was birthed
in Oklahoma because of a hero in my book by the name of Terry Turner
with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. So it wasn't the FBI who really
came up with this idea. They were dragged into it by Terry Turner,
who was kind of figuratively pounding her fist on the desk years ago, back
in two thousand and three, when she said, we've got ten young ladies
missing from Oklahoma who are turned up dead in other states. I believe they're
trafficking victims. I believe long haul truckers have done this. The FBI showed
up, said you're absolutely right, and started this initiative long Haul Hunting the
Highway serial Killers, and Frankfiglusia is with us. So this was the perfect
crime for a long haul trucker, wasn't it. You're always on the go,
you're kind of in the shadows anyway, you work a lot of odd
hours at night, and you move stealthily through the United States. You know,
there's a reason why long haul trucking is the number one profession of serial
killers. It's because of what you just said. You've got a mobile crime
scene in an eighteen wheeler, and these truckers are grabbing their victim in one
jurisdiction, they're raping and murdering her in a second jurisdiction, and they're dumping
the remains in a third and they went by names like that. US law
enforcement has a huge town, I was going to say, and they go
by names like truck stop killer and others. Yeah. Some of the most
notorious serial killing truckers are featured in the book, including Robert Ben Rhodes,
who was good for probably fifty fifty murder victims. He was stopped only because
an Arizona State troopers saw his truck along the side of the road, walked
up to it, began to hear a woman screaming. Turns out she was
shackled to a torch and a torture chamber rigged in the back of the truck,
and that began the unraveling of Robert Ben Rhodes. But I'm telling you
there's many, many more out there, and Oklahoma has just suffered immeasurably with
young women missing and murdered at the hands of truckers. Thank goodness for Terry
Turner. I feature one victim in the book who is Casey Joe Pipe stem
from the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, very young girl who was trafficked and then
found dead in Grapevine, Texas. Wow. Yeah, So when did this
all begin? Well, I think as long as there have been truckers and
sex trafficking. We've had this ready made kind of victim pool with a ready
made suspect pool. But the FBI started this initiative in two thousand and four
and only publicly acknowledged it in two thousand and nine because they had to.
There are two men murders, and by the way, this hasn't stopped.
When you've got two hundred unsolved cases and four hundred and fifty suspects, that
means we still have serial killers amongst the long haul community on our highways.
Thank god. By the way, we're only talking about a tiny fraction of
long haul truckers because ninety nine percent of them are decent, hard working people
just trying to put food on their family's table. I didn't want to indict
the entire industry either, Frank Iglusy, because so many listen to this program,
both on the terrestrial signal end on our iHeart radio app when they're out
of town. They like to keep up with what's going on at home,
and it makes them feel a little more connected than they always There's that other
thing too, the psychology of being a long haul trucker. You're always disconnected.
I do get deep into that. I ask the question nature or nurture?
These are these killers attracted to the job, is what it allows them
to do? When does it start? And of course the age old question
of how do you make a serial killer? Often these truckers have severe abuse
in their childhood, but then the light bulb goes on when they get into
that isolated world of trucking that they pretty much can do whatever they want without
getting caught at it. So that is the problem. It's been going on
for decades and we need to bring an into it. It's shifted a lot.
I get into that the times of trafficking that go on today are not
so much physically at the truck stop parking lot, but now online advertising.
The transaction occurs at a nearby motel or massage parlor. That makes it even
harder and more dangerous for the victims. I was also going to ask about
I mean, there was a time when a lot of the truckers were abusing
drugs to keep going and to log more time. I don't know that that's
so much of a problem, but does that factor into the whole criminal aspect
of this. Yeah. I asked some of the women that I spoke with
the victims who survived violent encounters with truckers, and they said, without a
doubt that alcohol and drugs does fuel the violent rage sometimes that they encounter with
a trucker. But I'm pleased to report that some of the drug use has
gone down. There was a period, you're right, seventies eighties, lots
of amphetamine used to stay awake, even meth, and then to come down.
You know, you take downers, you drink alcohol. The statistics right
now are that ten percent of long haul truckers drink alcohol every day, twenty
percent binge drink five or more drinks at a time, and forty four percent
of truckers say they are suffering signs of major depression. Oh, I can
see that easily. I've had friends who really weren't I think suitable for the
job, and they were attracted to the amount of money they were going to
be making. And then I realized, well, what good is all this
money if you're never home to spend any of it? You know, you
know, speaking of the money, the guy I rode with, he's in
the six figures. I mean he left was a He was a graduate of
the Culinary Institute of America. He worked as a chef, but he left
that job to make more money in long haul truck. Yeah, it's a
very especially now. The other thing I wanted to ask about is the new
technological advances that the trucking industry has adopted, for instance, transponders. It's
very difficult for a trucker these days to stop for a long period of time
without his dispatch. You're noticing technology has played a role, and law enforcement
does believe some of the numbers of killing are going down because of the constant
electronic monitoring that goes on. This is particularly true at the big corporations.
Right, the names were all familiar with we see them emblazoned on the trail.
But let me tell you something. As I worked through that theory in
the book, Hey, maybe probably not a corporate trucker very tracked. Maybe
it's owner operators. Well, then I find chases where the corporate trucker has
parked his rig on his mandatory thirty six hours of downtime. So he gets
in an uber or a rental car and he goes out and kills on his
downtime. So you can track it all you want, but it's sitting at
the parking lot. Yeah, former FBI special agent Frank fig Lucy. The
book is long haul Hunting the Highway serial Killers has a lot to do with
here in Oklahoma, as a lot of this story was born here, so
that is a fascinating part of the read. Frank, I got to tell
you too. The Matthews office building used to reside in the same building as
our local FBI headquarters. In fact, we would keep our radio station vehicles
in the former FBI motor pool downstairs. So we're no longer in that building,
but it was great fun to think of all the lore of everything that
had happened in that particular office. Oh for sure. Yeah, there's a
that's a great office. I've actually been there a couple of times and I
do occasional work for the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial and Foundation. Great people in
that Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast, and
remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation